The Lost Man

Dear Kate,

The Oscars this Sunday.  A joke big and loud enough that it calls all sorts of attention to itself.  I care for it insofar that good attention is called to good movies.

Politics, that's how it's done, but is there any other way?

"Man is by nature a political animal," so said Aristotle, by which he meant, among other things, "every man, by nature, has an impulse toward a partnership with others."  Human solidarity.  We want to know we are all right and alright together.

I am sure you are not following this - and there is no need to: how Jane Campion, the director of "Power of the Dog" has literally thrown away her Oscar along with that for the movie, being cancelled for a little joke that got loud.  A feel-good movie called CODA is taking full advantage (that only money can buy) of the situation; lucky so far no one associated with the project has done anything to turn itself into a bad apple.

Politics, that's how it's done: call the election before your dirt comes out.  Everybody must get stoned.

Enough.  Let's talk movies.  The truth is one of the best movies last or any year, actor-turned-director Maggie Gyllenhaal's "The Lost Daughter" isn't even nominated in the category.

I am not going to spoil anything for you.  It is a movie to watch and watch again, to discover what you have missed between the lines the first time around, or the lines you didn't miss, words unspoken but loud and clear, and to behold the faces of human, faces of women, how they hold the world together as it breaks them apart, entertain the fragile possibility of tender hopes and soft longings, too little for big attention, and for me to remember how the faces have occupied a secret corner of my imagination as they harbored in their own.

Politics, that's how it's being undone, by a good story well told.

Yours, Alex